[Pkg-urxvt-maintainers] Bug#848284: rxvt-unicode-256color: please take over rxvt rxvt-unicode aterm

[Adam Borowski]

Package: rxvt-unicode-256color
Version: 9.22-1+b1
Severity: wishlist

Hi!
Because it's a shame to ship terminals incapable of UTF-8 when a
fully-capable fork exists, please produce dummy transitional packages
that depend on rxvt-unicode-256color:
* rxvt
* rxvt-unicode
* aterm

This has been OKed by rxvt's maintainer, rxvt-unicode is produced by your
source, aterm is orphaned.  All of these come from the same codebase
origins, and none have drastic changes that would make users complain.

As for why -256color, that's a separate issue.  There's no real way to
detect lack of 256 color support: the only terminals with meaningful TERM
variables are "linux" (console) and rxvt variant, everyone else claims to be
"xterm": real xterm, all vte-based (ie, ~80% of terminals in use), konsole,
putty, even Win10 console.  Thus, most new programs simply output these
codes unconditionally, which works reliably everywhere[1] but on rxvt
variants other than -256color.  And you don't have the usage share to
persuade people it's a wrong thing to do.


Meow!

[1]. Well, on Linux and FreeBSD console you get only 16 colors because of
hardware limitations, but those colors get picked closest to what was
requested, which can't be said of rxvt.